David Smerdon - When refugees work: The social capital effects of resettlement on the host community in the absence of labour competition

Date(s)
Thursday 9th June 2016 (13:00-14:00)
Description

This week's Brown Bag will be given by David Smerdon visiting from the University of Amsterdam.  The seminar will take place from 1pm to 2pm in A45 Sir Clive Granger Building (lunch provided).

New Title: When refugees work: The social capital effects of resettlement on the host community in the absence of labour competition.

Abstract: We examine the effect of refugee resettlement on social capital through a case study of a rural town in Australia. The resettlement was exogenous with respect to social indicators of the township and filled an unmet labour demand in the host community, thus allowing us to isolate pure social capital effects. We combine data on trust from a lab-in-the-field experiment and longitudinal survey data on social measures for both the treated town and demographically and economically similar rural control towns. Contrary to current social theory of ethnic diversity and migration, we find no negative social capital effects on the host community. Furthermore, residents in the treatment town were less susceptible to ethnocentric trust, and showed significantly more favourable attitudes towards refugee resettlement in Australia in general. Our results show that refugee resettlement does not lead to negative social or community effects once the effect of labour competition is removed, and suggest that shifts toward rural resettlement policies may be welfare-improving for host

 



Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics

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